Extending SuccessFactors Capabilities Using an iPaaS – Part 2 (Compensation)

In my first blog on how to extend SAP SuccessFactors core capabilities by using an Integration Platform, we looked at the automatic creation of Development Goals in the Career and Development Planning (CDP) module. Here, we will look at Compensation.

The Compensation module is one of the more complex SuccessFactors modules to implement, and there are often unique reporting and data visualization needs. So, what happens when a client doesn’t want a report, but wants to see the information displayed in SuccessFactors? This was the requirement of one of our clients who also had the Employee Central (EC) module. In this case, use of YouCalc was not a viable solution.

Business Objective

Our client uses a set of custom calculations to determine compensation values such as Total Salary, Total Effective Salary, Total Compensation (which would also include Benefits and Paid Time off) and other Compensation fields. They wanted to compute, consolidate, and display all this information in a single screen within the SuccessFactors system.

Designing the Process

To display all the fields in a single panel we decided to create a custom screen using the SuccessFactors Metadata Framework (MDF). A custom background section was used to display the field within the system.

The more difficult issue to resolve was how to compute and update the values in the MDF object. Since the source data resided in multiple Employee Central entities, it was not possible to use business rules to update the MDF. Instead, we designed a custom Boomi process to pull the data needed from the EC entities and update the custom MDF object. Here is a high-level view of the process.

Developing the Solution

To update the custom MDF object, we first needed to complete a detailed field mapping between the source and target entities, and then include the appropriate computation and transformation logic.

To complete the mapping, you would need to determine the source and target fields within each entity. There are two different ways to gather this information from within the SuccessFactors Admin tools:

The OData API Data Dictionary

The Configure Object Definition

Either way, your implementation consultant or system admin will need to permission your account so you have access to these features. If you use the API Data Dictionary, you will need to find the specific entity and expand the view to get the detailed field attributes.

If you use the Configure Object Definition, you need to select the correct values from the drop down lists in order to see the object details.

Conclusion

The most difficult part of this project was the Boomi process, due to the complex logic involved with parsing the compensation data. We used multiple functions in the Mapping component along with JavaScript. The Boomi process runs daily, looks for any employee record that was modified since the last execution, and only processes those records. This same concept and approach can be applied to any other MDF or Employee Profile panel.

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This is pretty useful information. Sometimes we do encounter such requirements from client which are not a direct fit for the available solution. This kind of out of the box thinking is very much needed in our business.